


The Pink Clefthoof

by Tolpen



Series: Tales From Beyond the Veil [2]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Afterlife, Darkness, HeadQuarters Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: It is hard to lose your peace within death, but Garrosh manages to do so nevertheless. Watch your back and don't go without light, for the danger is in the dark.He is waiting... He is patient and cunning, ready to strike when you let your guard down.Of course. Of course it is him. Who else would it be?What is he waiting for?





	The Pink Clefthoof

There was a game called The Pink Clefthoof played in the Warsong clan. The rules were very simple but winning was nearly impossible. You lost the game when you thought about a pink clefthoof. Of course the catch was that thinking about how you most not think about a pink clefthoof was also thinking about a pink clefthoof, and the harder you were focusing on not thinking about it, the more you thought about it. Garrosh didn't like this game and his strategy of winning was never playing it.

When he died, he felt... It was exactly peace with himself. It wasn't as if all his wrongness and sins were forgiven. But certain weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The fight was over. The afterlife was, as far as he had known, empty and there was no danger in the dark. The loneliness was driving him mad – Garrosh was the first to admit it, he found himself talking to a lake – but it was soothing in a way. Peaceful. He wouldn't go as far as saying it was kind but had someone else said it, he would had agreed.

And then he encounter in Tanaan Jungle happened and everything that was forgotten and left behind returned back to Garrosh. For the first time in ages he set a campfire and took a night watch. He was going carefully around every corner, always watching his back, keeping eye on the darkness, waiting until all movement stopped before he let himself rest for a while.

He hadn't got a choice, he couldn't let his guard down. If he had, it would probably be the last mistake he would had ever done. He was low key anticipating a sign of his failure – an arrow shot from the dark, fingers wrapped tight around his neck, sharp blade in his back. He was waiting for it because he was sure it would come, _he_ would come, and Garrosh didn't know when or how and this not knowing was keeping him awake.

Garrosh was, when it came down to business, a very thoughtful orc and knew that panicking around wouldn't solve a thing. He sat down and thought about the situation he was in what what should he do. It was a very long thought and a complicated one.

If he had to summarise it, it could be put as something like this: In the Ancestral Lands you could only go where you remembered it, shifting from one memory to other. Therefore if you keep yourself constantly within one memory which only you remember, no one else is able to find you. To put it simply, not remembering anything Vol'jin could had a memory of should be safe for Garrosh, isn't it so?

And here was where The Pink Clefthoof came into it. The more he was focusing on avoiding such thoughts and memories, the more he was in fact thinking about them. Under his feet the soft Nagrand plains changed into the Valley of the Four Winds. Red rocks of Hellfire Peninsula shifted into Durotar in front of his eyes. Frozen wasteland of the Frostfire Ridge was becoming more and more Borean Tundra with every step he took.

_When you think about a pink clefthoof, the Pink Clefthoof comes and stomps you neck deep to the ground. When you think about Vol'jin, he appears right behind you and stabs you in the back, twelve times._

Garrosh was afraid. Not scared to death, he was dead already. But the terror was clutching his chest and making him lose his breath. Some days it was hard to keep moving, he wanted to lay down and stay there, wait for anything that comes next whatever it is going to be. He kept moving nevertheless. He was running. Running away from the dark, from the past, from Vol'jin, from the damned Pink Clefthoof.

 

The trees were not familiar, neither was the land. The only thing he was able to recognize was the rain and that was mostly because rain is an universal constant and is same no matter the place. It was cold, wet and darkening everything, curtains of water hanged from the nearly black clouds. There was a distant sound of thunder but no lighting.

Garrosh was cold, soaking wet and tired. He wanted to be angry for freezing and drowning in this terrible weather but he was too tired to be angry. He stumbled upon a cave and without a proper second thought he entered it to hide away from the rain.

Mistake. Big mistake. Damned huge mistake and he realized it too late. It was dark in the cave, too dark. Maybe he was just imagining it, maybe it was real, he didn't know. Most likely it was both because the Ancestral Lands didn't make a difference between those two. But he was sure he felt hundreds, thousands of hands and talons and claws and fingers and maybe even ropes and tentacles on his back, then wrapping around him and pulling him deeper in the dark.

The entrance to the cave, the only light in darkness faded away. It was hard to breathe. It was impossible to move. Garrosh was trying the only thing that he had left – think. But his brain, usually so fast to come up with a solution for every problem, was failing him. It was filled with fog of numbness and clouds of fear, he couldn't think clear. He realized he was losing consciousness.

He wanted to cry for help despite knowing nobody could hear him but it was as if his throat was full of blood, his own blood, and he could only gurgle. He wanted to cry but he couldn't bring himself to do so. He had only two options now, either fight or give up.

Garrosh clenched fists and summoned all his strength to break free from the grasp of the darkness. He put his hands down on the cold soil. Then he kneeled. Then laid down completely. Beneath his chest he felt something sharp, cold and made of metal. He traced it with his fingers trying to make out the shape. A glaive. Troll glaive.

 _Of course,_ he thought as the darkness fell back on him and clutched him like the earth itself. He felt hot blood, so hot it was nearly boiling, running down his neck, he tasted the iron and salt on the back of his tongue. Some of the blood was escaping thorough his lips too. Strangely he didn't feel any pain. Throat full of blood.

There were footsteps. Bare feet on soil and stone. Slow, quiet, audible only because otherwise there was absolute silence. They stopped right next to his head. _Of course it is him._

The darkness was absolute. He could imagine that if he could move, he would see glowing yellow eyes, had he looked up. Red crest of hair, had there been any light, skull resembling white paint on sharp face, gleam of tusk. He didn't have to take that look to know they were there. He felt it all around him in the darkness.

_Who else would it be?_

The silence was deafening, nobody moved. Garrosh knew that whatever was going to happen if it wasn't happening in the next five seconds, he would not know about it because his mind was fading away and instead of thoughts there was only soft cotton of unconsciousness.

_What are you..._

_Wait..._

_...ing..._

 

_For?_

Pain. Terrible paralysing pain. It was sitting in his back throat like a spider in its web.

Warmth. Friendly and welcoming warmth. A fire.

A different pain. Like a scratch from a cat all across his chest. Annoying but not serious. Oh yes, he had fallen on a blade, hadn't he? The mere memory of that cave was choking him, the spider of pain in his throat growing larger.

He fought the need to cough and lost. Garrosh coughed as if he had a plague, he sat up and he was still coughing and he couldn't breathe and just when he thought the pain in his neck is going to cut his head off and he would throw up his own lungs, he spew something out.

It was actually a spider. Fat, brilliant ruby red spider, it's body round and big as an orc fist with long thin legs like needles. It was sitting in cold grass blue with midnight and orange with a nearby fire and it was glowing lightly his ruby red in the dark. Four pairs of eyes white and round as pearls blinked and focused on Garrosh who was too terrified to move. The spider was clearly preparing for a jump.

A jump it would never start because out of nowhere a log came in flying and landed on the pain spider. Squelch. There was nothing left of it but a small pool of blood.

“Do ya have any idea what dat was?” The voice was far more hoarse than Garrosh remembered it but it was that damned sneaky troll chieftain, that was without a doubt. There was no need to turn around to confirm that, so Garrosh didn't turn around to look at him. He wasn't even sure he would be able to face him.

He shook head in response.

Vol'jin sat down next to him, he saw him with the corner of the eye, teal skin or fur or whatever was that and flash of bright red hair. Garrosh was focusing his look on the bloody pool. It was easier to look at it. At least this one didn't stare back. There was silence, both uncomfortable and comfortable at once. Comfortable because there was everything said and done already. Uncomfortable because it was... Well it was between Garrosh and Vol'jin.

“Ya know... It is kinda strange to find ya in da cave where ya nearly killed me. Yar orders anyway,” said Vol'jin finally. There wasn't any hint of his usual sarcasm in the voice. It sounded concerned. That kind of concerned when you ask you friend if he had been feeling well lately while you are looking at the Reaper of Souls grinning behind said friend's shoulder.

Garrosh had no answer so he gave it. The newly risen silence was worried and nervous. Vol'jin didn't do another attempt to start a conversation and Garrosh was grateful for that. The pain was slowly fading, his head was clearing and the shock and terror were becoming only the need to scream for help.

“Why are  _you_ here?” Garrosh spoke finally, asking the question that was bothering him the most.

That raised some eyebrows: “Huh?”

“Why are you here? Aren't you immortal?” Garrosh asked again, this time turning around to face Vol'jin.

“Immortal?” Vol'jin repeated and a chuckle escaped around his broken tusk. “Immortal?” he burst out into laughter. He threw his head back, the pale scar all across his neck gleaming in the dim light of the camp fire, insane sounding laugh echoing between the mointains.

“Dat was a good one,” the troll said when he calmed enough to at least catch his breath again. Somewhere in the middle of laughing he broke into a cough attack and it took him a good half a minute to stop it.

Garrosh turned around, this time to look at the small fire and said: “I was serious.”

Vol'jin grinned: “Dat actually makes it even a better one.”

A confused silence. Nobody knew what to say.

Finally the orc asked: “How did you find me?”

Vol'jin looked for a moment a little embarrassed: “I kinda... Tripped over ya. I had been scared for mah life before in dat cave, dat be true, yes. But dis time, 'nd I am bein' really honest with ya here, I was scared for mah death. I thought ya were goin' to kill me once 'nd for good dere. Not sure why I am tellin' all o' dis to ya.”

Garrosh chuckled. It was actually... Sort of nice thing to hear. The great Vol'jin himself afraid of him. He of course didn't say that. Instead he said: “And here I thought it was  _you_ who came there to finish _me_ off.”

It made Vol'jin smile: “Fair enough.”

The silence was warm in the sort of friendly way.  _We are equally afraid of each other,_ Garrosh realized and put a log in the fire. He sighed and said: “You are the first person I have run into here.”

Vol'jin had an unreadable look on his face for a while, but that wasn't that hard since Garrosh couldn't read in troll faces unless they were thinking _murder._ Then the troll spoke: “Dat had to be lonely. 'Nd traumatic.”

“I must admit I miss a decent conversation. Or any conversation,” nodded Garrosh who was deeply convinced that traumas were happening to other people.

Vol'jin gave him a look: “Are ya sayin' dat I should be stickin' around for a while?”

Garrosh considered it, rubbed his badly shaved chin and then said: “Yeah. Why not. You're like my personal pink clefthoof anyway.”

“What is a pink clefthoof?” asked Vol'jin, confusin nearly dripping off the sentence.

Garrosh grinned: “It is a clefthoof. But it's pink. It is better not to think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because it stomps you neck deep into ground when you do.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Damn it, I've just lost The Game.


End file.
